Extreme Sensitivity… as mutual understanding. – A Women’s Murder Club Series, part 20

TITLE: Extreme Sensitivity… as a mutual understanding. (20/?)
PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy
DISCLAIMER: Women’s Murder Club does not belong to me. The characters do not belong to me. They are the property of James Patterson, 20th Century Fox Television and ABC. (Well, not anymore. Jackasses.) I have no problems with that as long as I can borrow them for short bursts and use them in pursuit of my own enjoyment. I am not trying to infringe. Though, I don’t know why anyone has a problem with fan fic. After all, it really is a compliment. If anyone wants to write fan fiction about my book, feel free.

(Cindy’s POV)

Walking back into the living room, a glass in each hand, Cindy was shocked, in a rather pleasant kind of way, to find Lindsay sitting exactly where she’d left her, sore ankle propped up on the coffee table, her other foot moving against Martha’s back.

“Wonders never cease,” she uttered as she handed Lindsay a glass and eased down beside her, closer than she would have dared only a week before. “Who knew, all this time, all it would have taken was the promise of some physical affection to make you heed instruction.”

Feeling rather voyeuristic, Cindy watched Lindsay’s lips close around the rim of her glass and take a leisurely sip before she lifted her head, her eyes dancing with Cindy’s over the top of it.

“Sadly, I doubt even that would have much effect on you.”

“I don’t know,” Cindy shook her head slowly. “You should have offered. You might have been surprised.”

“You mean there are actually ways of keeping you at a safe distance from a crime scene?” Lindsay husked.

“Not many,” Cindy admitted. “But that definitely would have been one of them.”

“You tell me this now?”

Cindy smiled and took a drink, gaze trailing over Lindsay’s face, but didn’t answer. It’s not that she didn’t want to tell her. More like she wanted to tell her everything, and she had a feeling if she opened her mouth, she would say far too much.

From day one, it seemed as if she’d just been waiting for Lindsay to really notice that she was there, to truly see her, as more than a nosy reporter, more than an interfering civilian, more than a minor annoyance. And she didn’t know if it would ever happen. Then Lindsay did, and Cindy realized that it wasn’t enough. Once she’d shaken off all of those other slightly true, yet still infuriating, labels she’d been saddled with, she found herself desperate for Lindsay to see her as more than a friend. But, unlike the personal effort she’d exerted in order to be seen as an ally, to be accepted as part of the club, she couldn’t exactly campaign for the position as Lindsay’s ‘more than friend’.

So, she’d just waited.

Then, somehow, she’d managed to escape that label too, almost by accident.

She’d kissed Lindsay. Lindsay had kissed her back. And then some. They’d been on a date. They’d just spent an entire day together, and Lindsay didn’t once check her cell phone. Lindsay introduced her as her girlfriend. And now, she was sitting alone with the Inspector, in her apartment, sharing a bottle of wine, and, despite everything she’d learned about Lindsay in the time since, despite every imperfection, and there were plenty, despite arriving at the astonishing conclusion that Lindsay was, in fact, human, sometimes weak and oftentimes wrong, Cindy still found her as breathtakingly beautiful, and was just as captivated, as she had been on the day that Lindsay strutted into The Register and made her so damn nervous she could barely walk.

“What are you thinkin’?” Lindsay asked gently, the relaxed drawl that slipped past her lips bringing an instantaneous smile to Cindy’s face.

What she was thinking was that Lindsay was looking at her that way again, with that unmistakable, intoxicating desire that it was still hard to believe was focused at her.

What she was thinking was that the moment was such a seamless meeting of her fantasy worlds and her reality that it seemed kind of surreal.

But, feeling vulnerable enough without putting those kinds of thoughts into words, Cindy avoided the answer by raising fingertips to Lindsay’s jaw and leaning in for a short, mostly innocent kiss.

Lips reluctantly pulling away from Lindsay’s with a delightful tingle, she met dark eyes, swirling with a hundred things, some explicit, some unidentifiable, and felt somehow lost and found at the same time. Fingers spreading wider, Cindy pulled Lindsay in with greater insistence, lips crashing into Lindsay’s with inadvertent force. Far from hurting her, it drew a satisfied groan in response.

Unsurprisingly, Lindsay wasn’t the least bit shy about taking charge, her tongue begging entry before Cindy became aware of the glass being pulled from her hand and relocated to the coffee table. There was no delay in response or thought involved. When Lindsay’s tongue made a request, it seemed her body granted it without awaiting directives from her brain. Her lips parted instantly, providing Lindsay full access. Which was fine. If her mind could keep up with the glorious sensations running through her, it would have ordered that very reaction.

If her mind could keep up.

As Cindy felt the movement of Lindsay sliding her leg from the coffee table, felt Lindsay reclining beneath her, felt herself being pulled down to blanket Lindsay’s long, eager form, her neurons weren’t firing at top speed.

But that was fine too.

As long as Lindsay kept kissing her like that, so thoroughly she felt like the center of the universe, so deeply she felt the rest of the cosmos revolving around her at top speed, making her drunk with awareness, everything was fine.

There was touch, so light, it was almost phantom. Lindsay’s hands running up and down her back, becoming increasingly real when they slipped beneath the back of her shirt, skating upwards, skin teasing skin.

There was heat, so extreme, it nearly suffocated. Every place her body met Lindsay’s, through the multiple layers of clothing between them, they sweltered, a light sheen of sweat resultantly forming across every curve and crevice of Cindy’s body.

There was taste, so ambrosial, Cindy bit down reflexively on Lindsay’s throat, Lindsay’s harsh exhalation wisping against her ear. Lindsay’s fingernails dug into her back, but the pain was so sweet, it was easy to confuse with pleasure.

There was something else, so intense, it was overwhelming. So real, it was indescribable. This was what it was supposed to be like. It was genuine, natural… right. It was Lindsay and it was incomparable.

Feeling the slowing of her heart rate, without comprehending the source of the dangerous phenomenon, it was only when Lindsay drew away abruptly that Cindy gasped for much needed breath.

Her forehead fell against Lindsay’s, and in the midst of trying to recuperate, Cindy felt Lindsay’s head turn slightly.

“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?” Lindsay asked, struggling to form the words.

A long moment was required just to understand the question.

“Uh huh,” Cindy finally uttered, distractingly conscious of the warm body thrumming beneath hers and soft skin within easy reach of her lips.

“It’s late,” Lindsay murmured.

“No it’s…” Cindy started to argue, lifting her head to look at the clock on Lindsay’s DVD player. “Wow… it’s late.”

Lindsay grinned up at her, and all that she really wanted to do was merge their lips back together and get lost in time in with her again.

“You should probably go.”

To Cindy’s besieged cerebral processors, the words were moderately shocking.

“Do you want me to go?” she asked quietly.

It felt a rather hasty end to their evening, though not at all like a dismissal. More like a reprieve.

“No,” Lindsay stated firmly. “But you probably should.”

She smiled that slow, sexy smile, imprinted long ago in Cindy’s memory, and Cindy couldn’t help but smile back as Lindsay’s good intentions sunk in.

“You’re right, I probably should,” she nodded.

Head dipping without forethought, Cindy seized Lindsay’s mouth, kissing them both breathless once more, before she raised her head.

“Okay,” she breathed down at Lindsay.

“Okay,” Lindsay responded, looking about half a second away from changing her mind and locking Cindy in an inescapable, permanent embrace.

Cindy climbed up off of the couch, while the option was still available to her and the willpower was there, decidedly unsteady on her feet, and stumbled as she pulled Lindsay up to sitting.

“Are you okay to drive?” Lindsay asked with a blatantly pompous smirk.

“Asks the woman who’s sitting at a seventy degree angle,” Cindy teased breathlessly, using her hand to demonstrate Lindsay’s not exactly upright posture.

Lindsay laughed, though the pink tint that came suddenly to her cheeks, and her attempt at righting herself, suggested she had no clue that she was sitting crooked.

They remained where they were, looking at each other for a ridiculously long time, until Cindy at last reached down for her bag and started away slowly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, with every intention of sounding certain, but it came out as more of a question.

Lindsay nodded her agreement as Cindy backed toward the door.

“Cindy,” Lindsay called when she was almost there.

Cindy turned to find Lindsay looking very much in disclosure mode, like there was a confession just balancing on her lips, dying to take the plunge into the open. But Lindsay also looked scared, more than Cindy had ever seen her, and it really wasn’t necessary. Cindy got it. She did.

“Night, Linds.”

Lindsay smiled gently at being pardoned from whatever declaration might have been imminent.

“Night,” she softly returned.

Cindy slid the door open soundlessly, sent Lindsay one more absurdly adoring glance, and left Lindsay’s apartment.

Down the hallway, down the stairs, and out to her car, she was a total cliché, walking, unapologetically, on air.

She unlocked the door to Maggie, and, feeling the presence as surely as if Lindsay was standing right beside her, looked up at Lindsay’s apartment. Lindsay smiled down at her from the window, lifting her hand in a small wave.

Cindy grinned up, waving back, and climbed into her car.

Struggling to remember the little things, like how to start the engine, she finally put Maggie in drive, glanced up at Lindsay, and pulled away from the curb, feeling truly… and extraordinarily… loved.